Senior Pastor, Robert Dennison, preached this message on April 20, 2025. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Audio Transcript
Today we’re looking at Luke, chapter 24, verses 1 through 12. I invite you to turn in your Bibles to that passage. Or if you want to pull out one of the pew Bibles, we will be on page 938. We’re looking at the essential nature of the resurrection. Today is one of our two major times of salvation celebration throughout the year.
The first one is Christmas, when we celebrate the birth of Jesus, when God came to live among us in the flesh. And the prominent emotion that I have at Christmas is one of joy when we sing the Christmas carol. What is it? Joy to the world. The Lord has come.
Easter, on the other hand, is a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, when God demonstrated his power over sin and death. And the prominent emotion that we find in the text today is that they were surprised at the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So today, among other things, we’re going to be looking at the surprises of Easter and the essential nature of the resurrection and what it means for us. Now, if I were to tell you that Hunter said that he was going to give me a yellow 2025 Porsche 911 Turbo S with a price tag of $228,893 if he got a good deal, I would probably just brush it off. I would think that’s impossible that Hunter is going to do that for me.
If you don’t know who Hunter is, he’s our pastor of youth and outreach. Imagine my surprise, though. If I came to church one Monday and saw that yellow porch in the parking lot, I’d still think, no way. You know, Hunter would never get that for me. But if I walked in the door and he handed me keys and he handed me the title, I would be, and the word is surprised.
Can you see that? Why, I would be surprised.
But let’s take it a step further. Imagine Hunter tells me that he wants some time off because he’s going to take Leah to Neptune for their anniversary. I would definitely brush that off as impossible. But if he went and he returned and he showed me some pictures of them at the Holiday Inn that’s there on Neptune, I would be not just surprised about what, shocked or very surprised. Well, what happened on Easter Resurrection Morning was very, very, extremely a surprise.
Because even though Jesus had told his disciples that he was going to die and rise from the dead, they just couldn’t believe it. And when it happened, they were surprised. They were shocked. They were in a state of unbelief. And even after they saw all the evidence they they still had a hard time believing.
Now I’m going to give you a chance to interact with one another. You’re going to take out your bulletin, and there are four surprises we’re going to talk about today. So talk to that smart person next to you and see if you can figure out what the four surprises are before I get to them. And if you don’t have a smart person next to you, Mary, my wife is up here at the front, but she heard the first service, so that’s why she knows the answers.
I’m not going to grade you if you don’t get them all. That’s fine.
Okay, time’s up. I’m going to start reading now. Luke chapter 24 on the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came to the tomb bringing the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb. They went in, but did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.
While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men stood by them in dazzling clothes. So the women were terrified and bowed down to the ground. Why are you looking for the living among the dead? Asked the men. He is not here, but he has risen.
Remember how he spoke to you when he was still in Galilee, saying, it is necessary that the Son of Man be betrayed into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and rise on the third day. And they remembered his words. Returning from the tomb, they reported all these things to the 11 and to all the rest. Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary, the mother of James, and other women with them were telling the apostles these things. But these words seem like nonsense to them, and they did not believe the women.
Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. And when he stopped to look in, or stooped to look in, he saw the only the linen cloths. So he went away, amazed at what had happened.
First thing I want us to look at is the surprise. We go back to the first verses where it says, on the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came to the tomb bringing the spices they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb. They went in, but did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. And while they were perplexed at this, suddenly two men stood by them in dazzling clothes.
Now the women had returned, expecting to find what Jesus body they had prepared perfumes and resins and spices to place on the body to keep it from smelling. It was a way to honor the dead. There seemed to be no one who expected that Jesus would be Raised from the dead, even though they had seen him raise Lazarus and other people from the dead. But nothing was expected that morning. It was a morning full of surprises.
And the first surprise was that the stone was moved. Now that stone had been rolled in place. It was sealed and it was guarded. Mark mentions that they wondered in advance how they as women would be able to move this heavy stone. But when they got there, they found that it had been moved away.
The second surprise is that the guards were gone. They must have walked up saying, well, where are the guards? Who would dare to break the seal that was on the tomb? You know, the group of soldiers guarding that tomb were doing so under the threat of death. If that body was to be missing at any point, they knew that their lives were on the line.
But even with that threat hanging over their head, they were gone and were not to be found. In Matthew 27, verses 62 through 66, we read this. The next day which followed the preparation day, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate and said, sir, we remember that while this deceiver was still alive, he said, after three days I will rise again. So give orders that the tomb be made secure until the third day. Otherwise his disciples may come and stick steal him.
And then tell the people that he has been raised from the dead. And the last deception will be worse than the first. They said, take guards. Pilate said, go and make it secure as you know how. And they went and secured the tomb by setting a seal on the stone and placing the guards.
The first surprise, the stone was moved. The second, the guards were gone. The third surprise is the body was what? Gone? You are right.
That next surprise came when they entered the tomb. They must have thought, where is the body? We spent money. We were up during the night getting these spices and things ready. Luke says that they were just perplexed.
They still hadn’t caught on that he had been raised from the dead. And. And their question was, and their thought, who’s taken the body? Where has the body been taken to? Why is the body not here?
The assumption that they made was that the body had been removed by someone. They weren’t even considering the fact that he had been raised from the dead. And while they were standing there, perplexed and not having any understanding, God sent the third surprise. What is it? The angels went there.
Have you ever walked into a room, especially in the dark, and all of a sudden someone’s standing there in your face. You didn’t know was there, how startling that is? You know you don’t know what to do. It just takes your breath away. Well, imagine they had walked into this small room in the rocks, and it was just one door in.
There was nothing. And then all of a sudden, there weren’t just two men standing there, but they were in dazzling white clothes. They were obviously surprised. And the angels gave them this message. Let’s go to verse five.
So the women were terrified, and they bowed down to the ground. Why are you looking for the living among the dead? Asked the men. He is not here, but he has risen. Remember how he spoke to you when he was still in Galilee, saying, it is necessary that the Son of Man be betrayed into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and rise on the third day.
And they remembered his words. And so we talk about the remembrance that day. They were looking for Jesus among the dead, but the angels proclaimed that he is among the living. They should have remembered. Jesus had told them numerous times that all this would happen.
We go back to Luke chapter nine, where we read, it is necessary that the Son of Man suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and scribes be killed and be raised on the third day. And then in Luke 13, Jesus told them, on the third day I will complete my work. Then in Luke 17, he said, but first it is necessary that he suffer, talking about himself many things and be rejected by this generation. And as if that wasn’t enough, he gets even more specific in Luke chapter 18, where we read. Then he took the 12 aside and told them, see, we are going up to Jerusalem.
Everything that is written through the prophets about the Son of Man will be accomplished, for he will be handed over to the Gentiles, and he will be mocked, insulted, spit on, and after they flog him, they will kill him, and he will rise on the third day. But it says they understood none of these things. The meaning of the saying was hidden from them, and they did not grasp what was said. That was the remembrance. Now let’s think about the report.
Verse nine says that returning from the tomb, they reported all these things to the 11 and to all the rest. Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary, the mother of James, and the other women with them were telling the apostles these things. But these words seemed like nonsense to them and they did not believe the women. There were at least five women there that day. Mary Magdalene, who had been possessed by seven demons, which Jesus had delivered her from.
Joanna, who was the wife of Herod Stewart, Mary, the mother of James. And it tells us that there were more, at least two There could have been seven, there could have been eight. But what I imagine happened, as they got back to tell the rest, they all started talking at once. One lady was talking about the angels and another lady was talking about the stone being rolled away. And the other lady was trying to explain there was nothing in the tomb.
And it was like, how can we comprehend this? They were excited in what they were sharing. Peter gets up and he runs to the tomb and he stoops and he looks in and he saw only the linen cloths. What he didn’t see is that the body wasn’t there. The emphasis on he was just looking at the cloths.
And he went away amazed and perplexed at what had happened. And we’ll talk about this later on, that his attitude was he was just amazed. But John, the other disciple, he had a different reaction when he reached the tomb. First he went in and it says that he saw, but it doesn’t say that he was just amazed. It says that he believed he remembered what Jesus had said and he believed in his heart that he had been raised from the dead.
We go from the report now to look at the Necessity, and this is where we get to that the resurrection is essential in a number of ways. And the first thing I want you to see is that the resurrection is essential to the gospel. We turn now to First Corinthians, chapter 15, where Paul tells us about what the Gospel is, how important it is, and he nails it down that it’s three specific things I read. Now, I want to make clear for you, brothers and sisters, the gospel I preached to you, it’s which you received and it’s on which you have taken your stand. And it’s by this gospel that you are being saved.
If you hold to the message and just another word for the gospel that I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I passed on to you as most important. Remember, he says, I want to make this clear. This is what’s most important. This is what is essential for you to know.
Christ died for our sins. According to the Scriptures. He was buried, and here we have the resurrection. He was what, raised on the third day according to the Scriptures. You can’t have the Gospel and stop with Jesus on the cross.
You have to go through to say that he was buried and he was raised from the dead.
The gospel to us is the death. It’s the burial, and it’s the resurrection of Jesus. But I just want to, on a side note, say the Gospel. It’s not just a key to salvation. That we come into salvation, we have a relationship with the Lord, and then that’s it.
It is supposed to be the home in which we continually reside as believers. The Gospel is not either just a gate to salvation. It is supposed to be the garden in which we live and work for the rest of our life. The Gospel is not just a commencement, it’s a continuation. And it is a culmination of our salvation.
Our entire life of faith, from the beginning to eternity, is in, through, by, and with the Gospel. And therefore, we as believers should think about the Gospel every day, and we should thank God for the Gospel every day, and we should talk about the Gospel every day with believers and the lost that we are with.
Not only is the resurrection essential to the Gospel, but it is essential to our faith. Let’s go back to First Corinthians 15. Now, if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? And if there is no resurrection of dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation, the Gospel is in vain.
And not only is our proclamation in vain, but so is your faith. Moreover, we are found to be false witnesses about God because we have testified wrongly about God that he raised up Christ, whom he did not raise up. If in fact the dead are not raised. What Paul is saying here is he’s presenting something. It’s either true or false.
It can’t be anywhere in the middle. If it’s true that Jesus has been raised from the dead, then our Christian witness and what we proclaim is true and we have a beneficial effect in our life because Christ was raised from the dead. But if you say it’s false, Jesus was not raised from the dead, then everything that we say about God’s Word is a lie. Because if we’re lying about this, then everything else is circumspect and there is no beneficial effect for us because we won’t be raised from the dead. If God could not even raise Himself once again, there is no middle ground.
Everyone either accepts or rejects that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. The resurrection is essential to the Gospel. It’s essential to our faith. Let’s go on and read in verse 16. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised.
And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is. What’s the word word there. Worthless. You are still in your sins. Those then who have fallen asleep in Christ have also perished.
Because if we have put our hope in Christ for This life only. We should be pitied more than anyone. If Christ was not raised from the dead, your faith is worthless. There’s no resurrection, there’s no justification, there’s no sanctification. We are still sinners.
And why in the world would we continue to share this message and come to worship and read Scripture? Because if Christ was not raised from the dead, none of it does anything of benefit for us. The resurrection is essential to the gospel. It’s essential to our faith. But thirdly, the resurrection is essential to our future.
And here Paul quits giving us questions and riddles, but he just says it plainly. But as it is, Christ has been raised from the dead. The first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. He makes the clear statement. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead also comes through a man.
For just as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. And that’s our future hope. Because Jesus was raised from the dead, we know that we will be raised also, but each in his own order. Christ, the first fruits. And afterward at his coming, those who belong to Christ will also be raised from the dead.
The resurrection is essential to our future. Continue to read. In verse 24, he tells us that then the end will come when Jesus hands over the kingdom to God the Father. And Jesus abolishes all rule and authority and power. And he will reign until he puts all his enemies under his feet.
And the last enemy to be abolished is death. Jesus is coming as the reigning king. He is coming to conquer all of evil, he in all of sin, and to set up a new kingdom in this world. And if he had not been raised from the dead, if he were still in that grave, he would not be able to come as a king. That would be worth anything to us.
But because he was raised from the dead, we can count on a king who is coming to make everything right. We’ve talked about the Gospel several times today, and we have five words that we like to talk about when we talk about the gospel, just so people get a full understanding. The words are creation, choice, condition, cure, and creation. Again, the first creation is a good creation. Because if we go back to Genesis chapter one, we find that God, who is good in his nature, made nothing evil in this world.
Everything he made was good, meaning everything was not only good as opposed to bad, but everything was there that was needed. Everything that was essential for the success of the human race was given to mankind. God gave us a good creation with no evil, with no sin. But he also gave Adam and Eve, a choice. He said, you can either continue to have a relationship with me, believe everything I say, live in the glorious joy of what I provided you with.
But if for some reason you don’t want to live with me, you want to go your own way and make your own decisions, you can do that. And when Satan came to tempt Adam and Eve in the garden, he lied to them. And they decided, we don’t want to follow God’s way. We want to make our own decisions so we can be like God. They made a choice, and that choice was destructive because immediately the things cropped up.
They started blaming one another. There had not been blame before. They were ashamed that they were not wearing clothes. There had been no shame before. They were embarrassed to go before God.
So the choice that they made destroyed their relationships. But God also said, it’s going to be destructive in your world because now there will be death. It’ll be hard to make a living. You’re going to continue to argue about things throughout your life. There will be sin, There will be evil.
Their choice destroyed the paradise that God had created. And the sad thing is that Scripture tells us that every child born to them and every grandchild and every great grandchild all the way down to us today we’re left with this deadly condition called sin in our life. And we still choose not to follow God’s way, but to go our own direction. And because we have this deadly condition, it means that we are going to die in our sins and have to spend eternity in punishment. But Scripture tells us that God loves us so much that he knew that we couldn’t do anything to heal ourself.
So God gave a cure for us. And that cure was that Jesus Christ came in the flesh. He lived a sinless life. He died on the cross to pay for the penalty of our sin. And he rose from the dead.
And that word gracious there means that it’s free. We can’t give enough money to receive the cure. We can’t do enough good works to receive the cure. We can’t come to church often enough to receive the cure because we can’t earn it. God just gives it to us.
And when we accept that gracious cure and we’re promised that we are now a new creation, we’re changed on the inside. And we look forward to the day that God is going to make a new creation. He’s going to remove sin and death and all evil from the world and make everything perfect again. That’s what the gospel is about. But it’s not just enough to know what the gospel is.
We also have to respond appropriately to God. This is what a proper response looks like. The proper response is that anyone may receive God’s gift of salvation by simply telling God. And that’s what we call prayer, just talking to Him. They simply tell him that they want to receive his gift.
And then those that do receive him, if they have an intellectual understanding, but it has to go beyond that. There has to be this sincerity in our heart, and there has to be a commitment of our will that we are offering our lives up to God to let him do with us, to lead us and direct us in whatever way he wants. And then once a person does that, they will openly declare that Jesus is their Lord, meaning He’s truly their God and their master. And they’re going to declare that they believe in their hearts that God raised him from the dead. And when that happens in someone’s life, then they have appropriately responded to the gospel and God makes them a new creation.
What does it look like? What might you pray to the Lord? What might you tell him? I’ve got a statement written out here. It’s not these exact words that bring you to saving faith in Christ, but this explains, expresses the idea what should be going on in your heart.
Someone that wants to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior and be a new creation, if they want to accept the gracious cure, they would say something like this to the Lord God, thank you for creating a world for us that was all good. I understand that when Adam and Eve chose to disobey you, that sin entered the world, filled it with evil. And I know that because of their choice and my own choices, I have a deadly condition called sin that keeps me from having a right relationship with you, God. I want to have that right relationship with you restored. I believe in my mind and in my heart that Jesus died on the cross, was buried, and rose from the dead to provide a gracious, free cure for my sin problem.
And today I am turning, I’m repenting from living a life for myself to living a life for you. I want you to be my master and friend. And I want to thank you for making me a new creation. If you’ve never asked the Lord to offer his salvation to you, this is what you would express to him. Him.
It’s. It’s in your bulletin for you to take home. But I also want to point out, if you just want to go over this again, that there’s a little bulletin out there called what is the Gospel, or maybe you have someone in your life and you’d like to share that with them. Please feel free to pick these up as you are leaving today. And there are also some Bibles out there, but I will just warn you, you have to have a good eyesight because the print is very small, because these were very, very, very affordable.
Okay? So don’t complain about the print for the price. You know, God wants us all to come today and be an absolute thanksgiving that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead and it would delight his heart. The angels would rejoice in heaven if you’ve never accepted Jesus Christ as your savior, that you would talk to him today with this prayer and that you would leave with a certainty in your heart that he’s your savior. If you’ve made that decision today, I would just encourage you talk to somebody with a name tag.
We’d like to hear about it. We’d like to tell you what you can do next so you can grow in your faith. Kelly Jo is going to be coming to lead us now with the worship team and a closing song. I’m going to ask that you stand. We’re going to sing with thanksgiving in our heart, and we’re going to think about the message today, how God wants us to apply that to our lives.
If you don’t feel like singing, you just want to pray, even if you want to stay seated, that’s absolutely fine. Also, may we have a word of prayer? Heavenly Father, we thank you for the death, the burial, and specifically today, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that we have a future hope, that we know that we will be raised from the dead like he was to spend eternity with you. In your son’s name we pray. Amen.